Sunday, December 6, 2009

What is Spirituality? For me, spirituality is the way of life in which the brain is allowed to reach the limit of its potential. Memory, by the way of thoughts is not allowing required space for the brain to function at the peak of its potential. When we reach the stage of having complete freedom from our memory and hence thoughts, the brain will be having sufficient space to function without any blockage. I am not sure anyone can accept this definition!

Every one of us has our own view on spirituality based on the plane in which our thoughts and perception are anchored. This plane is based on our belief systems, our environment in which we are grown, the culture which we belongs and so on. Only very few might have dared to go beyond this plane of understanding due to the very fact that this plane of life provides enormous psychological security. Under the warmth of such psychological security, we consider all our suffering as natural part of our life and never look forward towards reality or truth, upon understanding which there will be no more sufferings. Under the psychological security provided by the belief systems, even many of the people who talks about spirituality, live a life far away from truth or reality.

During at least the last ten thousand years of human existence, there were people who were living with reality. Even at current date, there are many such beings, at least very few are in the lime light. Few of these beings who were close to reality wanted to take the reality closer to the whole of humanity. The result is the scriptures of all the cultures and all the religions. The unfortunate reality is that there experience with reality had to be expressed as words. Possibly, the experience with reality cannot be expressed with the available words of any language or they might not have the linguistic expertise required to take these reality to the humanity. Hence the only possibility is expressing them in a subtle way with the words available with the languages and the linguistic expertise they had. Anybody who has no idea about what the reality or truth is, these expressions of those realized people have no meaning. At best the common population can create their own pictures from these expressions of realized masters and hence a belief system.

Now we are left with the task of interpreting those scriptures, if at all we have any urge to understand how they felt about reality. But in reality, it has no meaning for the common population except getting an idea of the possibility of experiencing something called reality or truth. As almost all the interpreters relied on their linguistic skills rather than the understanding of reality or truth, the real meaning of the scriptures might not have been revealed to us and it cannot be. The unfortunate is that with those interpretations, the majority of the human population entered into one or other belief system and distanced themselves from reality or truth. At the current moment, the only possibility available to us is transcending all these belief systems, if at all we have any inclination towards reality. Please note that it is not just ignoring them, but transcending them. If we are not doing that, we will be left with just some beliefs which do not have any meaning except providing some psychological security. Such psychological security is destructive to the spiritual growth.

There are few genuine spiritual gurus trying to impart the spiritual process to humanity. But unfortunately a cult is getting created, may be due to the irrational devotion of their followers. Of course, they need followers to carry on their social activities and spread their messages to public. Again the unfortunate event is that most of the people touched by their teaching/methods entered knowingly or unknowingly in the realm of hero worship even though those spiritual gurus are advocating against such hero worship. Also they tend to take the spiritual Guru as their spiritual authority. Once an authority is accepted for spirituality, there is no more spirituality for that person. This is because the authority takes away the freedom required for spirituality. Almost every one touched by those spiritual gurus, start emulating that guru with respect to that attribute which influenced that common person. Those people forget that they are entirely different from the guru and trying to emulate that guru with respect to any of the attributes of that guru has no meaning and any such attempt will be futile for their own spiritual growth.

The spiritual gurus have to address people who are in many planes of understanding. Hence the followers have to use their wisdom while taking the teaching of spiritual guru. Otherwise the effort of the spiritual guru may mislead the followers instead of taking them closer to reality. Due to the blind belief or hero worship or acceptance of authority the people have with the guru, they fail to recognize the subtle messages from the guru and the message addressed to the plane in which they are and hence the possibility offered by the spiritual guru is being nullified. Even the close associates of those gurus might not been anywhere near reality due to the mere following, worshiping and acceptance of authority of spiritual guru- may be with very few exceptions.

The possible way to reach reality or truth through a spiritual guru is probably being with the guru and his teachings yet emotionally away from the guru. Now the question is, is it possible for the common population who are emotionally attached with all worthless things in life, being emotionally away from a spiritual guru who may be able to transform their life itself? It may not be possible. This is where the common population has to enhance their knowledge about spirituality while attempting spirituality. And here lies the core complexity in approaching spirituality. Due to this complexity, a commendable ratio of population who claims that they are spiritualist may not be anywhere near to spirituality. The unfortunate part is that they have no means to find it out. If spirituality is approached without the awareness of the traps in this path, it is very easy to get into one or the other trap. Once we are in the trap, the whole life will be a complete waste, whether or not one is in the arm of a Spiritual Guru. The way we are living now may be much better than the life within that trap.

Why do we need such a complicated spirituality? First up all, spirituality is not complex; our mind made it as complex with all the beliefs, opinions, and slavery. Secondly with spirituality, we have a possibility of living our life.